


Until You Need Some

by kittiesgalore101 (kittesgalore101)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Kylo Ren Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 08:18:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7214773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittesgalore101/pseuds/kittiesgalore101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>twenty four years passed until he thought about grace again. oneshot</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until You Need Some

Ben Solo never understood grace. As a child, he’d seen his mother pardon many people, but he never knew why she did it.  
He asked one day, after sitting with her in a briefing, why she had talked The Republic out of sending multiple inmates to death row. 

“Why’d you do that, mama?” his small voice asked.

“Because,’ Leia knelt in front of her son, ‘some people deserve a second chance to change their lives.”

“But they did such bad things, their punishment was fair!” Ben objected I confusion. 

“Grace always seems unfair until you need some, Ben.”

 

Twenty-four years passed until he thought of grace again. When he made his way through the remote forest of D’Qar, bruised and bloodied, making his way towards the Resistance base with his hands in the air. 

He was met with many guns, many pissed-off pilots, and a couple familiar jedi. 

“Stand down,” The mob parted to reveal an oddly calm General Leia Organa, arms crossed and a blank expression on her face.  
“Escort him to the medbay, cuff him to the bed.”

Two men were on either side of Ben Solo, but the man they dragged through the crowd wasn’t the Ben anyone remembered. 

Armed soldiers paced the door to the medbay, preventing any conflict from either side; and amid the commotion of the command center, there was a hushed argument in a quiet corner.

“I know he’s your son, but that can’t cloud our judgement,” an exasperated Luke plead with his sister.

“Luke, he turned himself in. After everything they’ve done to keep him away from the Light, he came back!” Leia whisper-yelled. 

“Leia, his actions were unforgivable. He killed his _father_ ! Your husband, the best friend I’ve ever had, he killed in cold blood!”

“His actions were unjustifiable, inexcusable, they were not unforgivable.”

Luke sighed, “You and I both loved the man Ben was, and I want him back too. But with everything he’s done, all the lives he took, how are you going to convince the Republic not to burn him at the stake?”

“Very carefully.”

 

They lacked the means for a proper trial, rather a group of Republic leaders acting as judge, jury, and executioner. 

“What kind of message does it send if we kill him? The Resistance doesn’t stand for condemnation and execution, we stand for peace and justice! This man was not captured, never resisted us, he walked to our base with his hands up,” Leia fought to persuade them.

“What will it say if we let him live? That you can go around killing for sport, brainwash children, destroy worlds of people, but all it takes is a peaceful surrender to make it all be alright!” A man protested from across the room. 

“That is where you’re wrong. We are not saying his actions are ‘alright’, however, we are saying we refuse to stoop to his level. We are a people capable of showing mercy where it is least deserved, giving him a second chance to do the right thing. Because that is how we stay in the light,” Leia took her seat in the silenced room. 

 

The General made her way through the base moments after the verdict was announced, and as she walked through the halls, she was met with both smiles and glares. 

But at her final destination she was met with something different. She approached her son’s jail cell, where he sat on a small wooden bench, not looking up to see the source of footsteps. 

She entered the cell, not closing the door behind her, “A decision has been made,’ Ben barely nodded in return, ‘you’ve been sentenced to a lifetime of service to the Resistance.”

Ben looked up in surprise when he heard those words, he finally met his mother’s eyes when he stood to hug her small frame, “I’m so sorry,” he whispered through tears.

“I know you are,’ Leia held her son tight.

“Grace seems unfair until you need some,’ Ben rubbed at his eyes as he regained his composure, ‘I was so afraid to come back here after everything I did, but then I remembered the day you said that to me, and I knew you’d be on my side.”

“The things you did will never be okay. But if you want to change your life, redeem yourself, no one has the right to stand in your way,” Leia refused to let her son’s hand go.

“If I could bring Dad back, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“I know you would. But wherever he is, he wants you to be happy; so that’s what you’re going to do,” they both cried.  


“I love you so much, mom,” Ben Solo hugged his mother for the second time in twenty-four years.


End file.
